SeaWorld orca trainers are out of the water — are tiger trainers, gator wrestlers next?

9:10 p.m. EST, June 6, 2012|Beth Kassab, Local News Columnist

When a judge ruled last week that SeaWorld's trainers can no longer swim with killer whales during shows, it was a decision long overdue.

There's plenty of evidence showing that SeaWorld should have known that putting its trainers in the water with the giant orcas was dangerous. Four deaths and more than 100 incident reports of aggressive or atypical behavior by the whales support that.

And the ruling, perhaps because Judge Ken Welsch had such unforgiving words for SeaWorld management, has gator wrestlers, tiger trainers and elephant handlers worried they could be next.

"We're all a bit concerned," said Grey Stafford, director of conservation for Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium in Phoenix. "Are we going to have to put cages around [horse] jockeys so they don't have contact with a 1,000-pound animal that could hurt them?"

Of course not.

This ruling is very specific to SeaWorld and its detailed history of interactions between people and whales.

To say that it could shut down the gator wrestlers at Gatorland or the tiger trainers at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey or any other show is a stretch.

And, though you can't argue tigers and alligators aren't dangerous, there's no case to show Gatorland or the circus is taking such a risk with the type of shows it performs.

At least not yet.

"Anytime a regulating body puts out a rule or a judgment, we watch that stuff very closely," said Mark McHugh, president of Gatorland.

Welsch's ruling was specific to SeaWorld and trainer Dawn Brancheau, who died in 2010 while in shallow water next to the largest killer whale in SeaWorld's collection. OSHA investigated and fined SeaWorld for dangerous working conditions.

The judge's 49-page ruling relied extensively on testimony about previous injuries and deaths at SeaWorld or other marine parks. Killer whales have played a part in the deaths of four people since 1991.

And, the ruling noted, one of SeaWorld's major flaws was its protocol for attempting to regain control of a whale that started to engage in dangerous behavior.

Trainers are taught to cue the whales a hand slap on the water, underwater tones or other signals.

But time and time again, the whales ignored those cues once they started behaving aggressively.

After one orca's violent interaction with a trainer, one SeaWorld manager wrote: "Let's face it, in these types of incidents, I don't recall any whale responding to any hand slap, food bucket, or any other distraction we tried to implement."

When a 6-ton killer whale named Tilikum grabbed Brancheau, one of the spotters hit an alarm intended to distract the whale, but it wasn't deterred.

"Despite the repeated failures of the recall signals, SeaWorld continued to rely on them to protect its employees," Welsch wrote.

He also said SeaWorld's claim to be able to predict with almost 100 percent accuracy the behaviors of its whales was bunk.

It's clear SeaWorld has changed the way it handles interactions between killer whales, trainers, even audience members.

I can remember being at SeaWorld as a child and watching some lucky kid — or so I thought — get picked out of the audience to feed or even kiss Shamu.

It's one of Florida's most iconic images. And there's a part of me that's sad my own children won't get to see trainers thrust out of the water on killer whales' noses.

But the facts are stacked against SeaWorld — because trainers are in water and dealing with animals so large makes what they do even more dangerous.

The judge's ruling, though, doesn't take away from SeaWorld's education and conservation mission.

The judge still allows trainers to closely interact with the whales backstage to ensure their health and well-being. And the animals' sheer size and beauty still generate a sense of awe in the revamped show that keeps trainers out of the water.

McHugh, who also happens to be a former SeaWorld killer-whale trainer, says only two trainers have been bitten by alligators at Gatorland in the past 16 years, and both wounds were relatively minor.

Park protocol calls for a "bite box" always at the ready with tools that would allow workers to pry a gator's mouth open if necessary during shows.

"My guys handle alligators probably hundreds of times every week, and we've never had to use the bite box," he said.

If anything, Welsch's ruling sends a clear message to other parks to take care to keep risks at a minimum. But it goes nowhere close to shutting them down.